


A Haunting

by Poetry



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Sad, Timey-Wimey, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-14
Updated: 2011-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-14 18:38:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack doesn't believe in ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Haunting

**Author's Note:**

> A triple drabble inspired by the German poem "[Nun seh' ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kindertotenlieder#.22Nun_seh.27_ich_wohl.2C_warum_so_dunkle_Flammen.22)" ("Now I see well, why with such dark flames") by Friedrich Rückert. Unbeta'd.

Jack doesn't believe in ghosts, but he thinks he might be haunted.

The Doctor and Rose take him all across time and space, to places even the Time Agency never sent him. He loves it all, whether they're licking pink icicles from the cliffs of Azaram'shal or breaking out of the dread dungeons of Castle Carduelina. But wherever and whenever he goes, there's always someone among the crowd who stops and stares at him, as if they can see right through to the core of his being.

When he went hunting for bargains on TARDIS parts in a 52nd century spaceport, a woman with blonde curls and high heels deadly enough to stop a man at five paces froze in her slow, confident walk and looked right through him, her eyes filled with a knowing he could hardly bear. At a nü-folk concert on the moon in the 2250s, an apparition of a man stood out to Jack in the screaming throng, his hair wild, his suit rumpled. He looked at Jack sideways, as if from the corner of his vision, but his eyes were dark with some stifled emotion he couldn't quite hold back, like smoke from a hidden flame.

One day, he works up the courage to tell the Doctor about the encounters, which by now have numbered into the dozens.

"Could be people you knew during your two missing years," the Doctor says. "Or they could be from your personal future. Happens to me all the time. Did I ever tell you I'm supposed to be Merlin one day?"

The Doctor's explanation makes sense, of course. What Jack wonders, and doesn't ask, is why the ghosts of his future look at him with such sadness in their eyes, like he's a tender, beautiful thing they've lost.


End file.
